__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

Benedict Arnold's Navy by James L. Nelson (2006). A history covering the early years on the northern front during the Revolutionary War. It is still shocking how close it was to folding Canada into the grasping arms of the United Colonies. Pretty close, eh Jock?
Anyway, the book is a long long exposition on how tough those frontier soldiers were. If you ever read Undaunted Courage by Steve Ambrose (1996) then you have some idea.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

36 Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and they will be bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

III WRETCHEDNESS

70 If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.

IV. BOREDOM

77 Pride. Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it; in other words, we would never travel by sea if it meant never talking about it, and for the sheer pleasure of seeing things we could never hope to describe to others.

79 How tiresome it is to give up pursuits to which we have become attached. A man with a happy home life need only see a woman who attracts him, or spend five or six pleasant days gambling, and he will be very sorry to go back to what he was doing before. It happens every day.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

"A classic of early Italian prose." Sounds interesting in a nerdy way.
I think I'll stick with The Economist for today.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

81 ...Equality in possessions is no doubt right, but, since men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might. As they could not fortify justice they justified force, so that right and might live together and peace reigns, the sovereign good.

Started reading the introduction to Diderot's D'Alembert's Dream, but got distracted and read the introduction to Journey to the West instead. Now on chapter 1 of the same. It's called one of the "Four Great Novels" of Chinese literature, and it's Huge.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1992)
This is a Hugo and Nebula Awards winner. For some reason I have completely over looked this author in the past. Her series of time travel books should have grabbed my interest a long time ago. It was with a giddy anticipation of finding overlooked classics that I openned this book.
The book chronicals parallel stories of a time traveler who trips back to 14th Century England and the crisis that engulfs her base in Oxford. There are two potentially interesting aspects to this book: the depiction of a near future England and an unvarnished description of the Middle Ages. For me this effort was a total disappointment. 4/10
Go ahead and reread Timeline by Michael Crichton (1999).

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (1995)
This is a satisfying construct of a book within a novel. Much of the action takes place in the near future perhaps 100 years after Readme and Snowcrash. It is a post nation-state world where nanotechnology is maturing. The main character is a girl who is given a "magic " book that prepares her for an unlikely future.
I must say that this book reinforces my admiration for the author.
8/10

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

Shadow & Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun; The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) and The Claw of the Conciliator (1981) by Gene Wolfe
Wow, where to begin? These sci-fi/fantasy books are nothing if not ambiguous. The story takes place in a far future Earth that has been totally transformed through the rise and fall of past civilizations, the introduction of advanced, now magical, technologies, as well as aliens and alien life forms. The book chronicles the the trials and tribulations of a novice torture/executioner.
I have a lot of problems with these books and the universe that Wolfe creates. I don't like the settings, I find them too fantastic, nor do I like the characters, they are all fatally flawed. I know these works are supposed to be some of the best sci-fi ever written but I just don't get it. Each chapter reads like a stand-alone short story. There is lots of repetition. The society and ecology are incomplete and unbelievable. I had to force myself to finish this volume. I have no desire to ever revisit the vast, strange and unpleasant world Wolfe has created.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

The Three-Body Problem , Cixin Lou (2006)
I am somewhat conflicted by this book. One one hand I appreciate the POV of the author, coming from the PRC. It is a unique voice in science fiction. However, the actual science fiction part of the novel is disappointing, i.e. the evolutionary development of the aliens. Totally unbelievable if imaginative. But too much for this old anthropologist to suspend belief.
I give it a 5/10 for originality.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

Gettysburg , Stephen W. Sears (2004). Yes, another in a series of military histories from jsorense. This one is quite good, if you are interested in the American Civil War (aka War of Nothern Aggression). This book is detailed, down to the individual tactics of regiments. It is , therefore for an audience that is already familiar with the battle. If you just interested in an overview then you may be overwhelmed by the details in this volume. Do you really want to know the succession of 'chains of command' for the different army units? Probably not.
If you are interested in this book then I highly recommend Sear's book on the Battle of Antietam, Landscape Turned Red. I give both of these books a healthy 8/10.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

The Fleet At Flood Tide by James D. Hornfischer (2016)
This is a military history of the conclusion of the war in the Pacific during WWII. It discusses the strategy and the rationale for the bombing campaign over Japan that concluded with the dropping of two atomic bombs which ended the war.
I expected to really like this book based upon my experience with two of the authorís previous books: Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Neptuneís Inferno. However I found it less focused than these other works. Perhaps he tried to put too much, too many, topics in one volume. It ended up being a long slog to finish. I highly recommend the other two books, this on, not so much.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

but i got bumped (dissilussioned?) early on unrfortunately when the author said that marxist theory about what drives fascist emergence has been discredited.
Actually it is being verified by the hour so what da fook he's talking about, I don't know

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden (2017)
Well I really like this author’s earlier work, Black Hawk Down (BHD). This one not as much. It is just as rich in combat imagery and emotion but, I think, it lacked some of the raw immediacy. This probably has to do with the relative timing of the two battles and the writing of the books. Still, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the American experience in Vietnam War. It would make a great companion piece with the PBS special on the War. Sort of illustrates all of the idealism and folly of the whole tragic period.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "

Just finished a trilogy of short books of the military sci-fi sub-genre. They are, in sequence, War Dogs (2014), Killing Titan (2015), and Take Back the Sky (2016) by Greg Bear. It’s about “Skyrines” kicking alien butt around the solar system. While the first volume has some good action sequences the subsequent books seem to lag and go on and on. They appear to me to be a collection of ideas about evolution and alieness rather than fully worked stories in an epic adventure. Why write a trilogy if it isn’t going to be an epic? Anyway, the only reasons to read the whole series is that Bear has gone out of his way to portray the actual thoughts and feelings of real combat veterans. Don’t look for glory or heroism spread to thickly among the characters.

__________________
"I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods.
I hope they are making it and they've all got stead jobs,
Oh but rock and roll still lives on,
Yeah, rock and roll still lives on. "